the straw and the camel's back

[mmegaera]

Some of you will have seen this twice, but...

Well, this is the end of an epoch for me. I've been a member of the Bujold mailing list for seventeen years, but I finally unsubscribed yesterday. Not, as most people apparently do, because of the volume, at least not in the traditional sense of the word, but because that volume simply got too ugly for me to deal with anymore. I'm not in a place where I can deal with that sort of ugliness right now, and may I say now how glad I am that there are other ways I'm staying connected with the many friends I did make there, including here?

Comments

[dfledermaus]

Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. In fact I just rejoined a couple of days ago and thought that the tone was significantly better than when I unsubbed. The volume seems to have dwindled considerably also.

[mmegaera]

Really? The volume went *way* up over the last few days, and it was seriously contentious. Are we talking about the same list [wry g]?

[dfledermaus]

Well, when I gave up in disgust two years ago pretty much every day had 8-10 digests, and they were composed of Tel vs. Someone (don't remember who) in a vicious and pointless "Barrayar is evil/Komarr is saintly" battle that managed to contaminate every single thread, regardless of the subject it started out with.

List blowups used to happen about once every 6 months when I first joined, then after a while it was every three months, then every month, every week...I gave up before it went to every day.

I'm going to try to be better about contributing to on-topic threads, and might end up just filtering out OT: threads entirely.

I'm sorry this was the breaking point for you though, and hope your family situation gets better.

[mmegaera]

Oh, yes. I remember Tel vividly. Those didn't feel like personal attacks *on me*, though, the way this did (we all have different triggers, and this one hit me right in a bad spot at a bad time), nor were the responses to my objections basically "you don't have the right to feel the way you do." It's not the first time I've felt attacked on list, but the other times I've had the emotional wherewithal to deal with it.

Anyway, thanks for the good thoughts. My 92-year-old mother is dying in slow motion, and basically fell off a mental and physical cliff this week. I'm not my usual perky self right now [sigh].